US President Donald Trump doubled down Friday on his claim of an "attempted coup" against him as his battle with Democratic foes entered a vicious new phase of personal insults and strong-arm tactics. Hovering over it all: the looming question of whether or not the Republican leader will be impeached -- "the big I-word," as Trump put it recently. The president said he has given his attorney general wide latitude to declassify intelligence information as he probes the origins of the government's investigation into Trump's 2016 campaign ties to Russia.

In a stunning escalation of the Trump administration's war on the press, the Justice Department has indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for revealing government secrets under the Espionage Act. The charges invoke broad provisions of the Espionage Act that make it a crime to disclose or retain any defense information knowing it “could be used to injure” the U.S. The act has no exception for reporters or publishers, but prior administrations have balked at invoking the law against journalists for fear of colliding with the First Amendment.

The Federal Aviation Administration is meeting with international air regulators from around the world on Thursday to determine what is needed to return the grounded Boeing Co 737 MAX to return it to service. The agency will summarize the status of three major ongoing reviews of the 737 MAX and give an update of the recertification process and shed light on Boeing's proposed revisions to its software and pilot training. Acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell said on Thursday he thought travelers in the United States and around the world would respect any eventual decision by the FAA to return the plane to service.

An outbreak of nasty storms spawned tornadoes that razed homes, flattened trees and tossed cars across a dealership lot, injuring about two dozen people in Missouri's capital city and killing at least three others elsewhere in the state. The National Weather Service confirmed that a large and destructive twister moved over Jefferson City shortly before midnight Wednesday. The tornado cut a path about 3 miles long and a mile wide from the south end of Jefferson City north toward the Missouri River, said police Lt. David Williams.

While abortion is legal nationwide, Americans have unequal access to the procedure, depending on their location in the United States and how much they are able to spend. The disparities are great indeed, from the more than 150 abortion clinics available in the most populous state of California, to only one in states like Mississippi in the South or Missouri in the Midwest. State laws also vary widely on other matters like speed limits for drivers and marriage age requirements, but the Supreme Court has set a "minimum standard throughout the entire country," noted Meg Penrose, of the Texas A&M School of Law.

If you've got Touch Bars on the brain but you've been unwilling to cough up the extra cash to get one, today is your lucky day. Amazon is running a one-day Gold Box deal on renewed MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models, and the prices are crazy. This product has been tested and certified to work and look like new, with minimal to no signs of wear, by a manufacturer or specialized third-party seller approved by Amazon.

Investec Asset Management, Aberdeen Standard Investments and Pictet Asset Management SA are cutting sterling positions or staying on the sidelines as Britain’s political turmoil reignites uncertainty around the nation’s exit from the European Union. With a senior minister resigning to add pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May to abandon her deal with the EU and quit, the risk of a disorderly Brexit is back on the radar. Sterling slid to a four-month low near $1.26 Thursday and is on the longest losing streak on record versus the euro amid concern that May’s successor could take Britain out of the bloc without a deal or call an early election.

Facebook has been accused of leaving 'broken children' as collateral damage in the wake of their commercial aims, the child sex abuse inquiry has heard. Barrister William Chapman, representing the victims of abuse at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), said social media companies were not preventing paedophiles reaching children as it was “contrary to their business model” and that their apps needed to be “fundamentally redesigned”. Police also warned that tech firms were going ahead with plans to encrypt more features "in the certain knowledge" it would lead to more children being abused.

President Donald Trump may be guilty of many things, but a cover-up in the Mueller probe isn't one of them. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attempting to appease forces in the Democratic party eager for impeachment, is accusing him of one, with all the familiar Watergate connotations. The charge is strange, not to say incomprehensible, in light of the fact that Congress is in possession of a 448-page report produced by the Trump Department of Justice cataloguing the alleged obstruction that Congress now wants to investigate.

Master communicator and battle-hardened political scrapper, Narendra Modi fought his way off the streets to become one of India's most popular and polarising prime ministers. There is no middle ground between admirers and adversaries of the 68-year-old, who is on target to become the first leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to win two five-year terms. After helping his father run a railway station tea stall in the small Gujarat town of Vadnagar, Modi ran away as a teenager to devote his life to politics.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday that the U.S. decision to deploy more troops to the Middle East in response to the perceived threat from Iran was "extremely dangerous" for peace. The United States said it was sending 1,500 troops to region in what it called an effort to bolster defenses against Tehran, and it accused Iran's Revolutionary Guards of direct responsibility for attacks on tankers this month. quot;The Americans have made such allegations to justify their hostile policies and to raise tensions in the Persian Gulf," Zarif told state news agency IRNA.

Army engineers say two runaway barges did "minimal" damage when they struck an Arkansas River dam. The barges, filled with 1,500 tons of fertilizer, swept down the flood-swollen river and hit the Webbers Falls Lock and Dam about noon Thursday and sank. Town officials in the riverfront town of Webbers Falls had warned residents to flee for fear such a collision would catastrophically breach the dam and flood the town.

Julian Assange was indicted by the U.S. under the Espionage Act on Thursday, setting the stage for a dramatic confrontation between U.S. and Swedish prosecutors, who each want to extradite Assange before the other. Sweden had, a week earlier, re-opened a rape investigation into the Wikileaks founder and began steps to request his extradition. The only U.S. charge against Assange before Thursday was one count of conspiring to hack a password, which came with a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

This month Alabama passed a law banning abortions at any time period with no exceptions for rape or incest, only when the mother's health is at risk. Two other states – Ohio and Mississippi – have passed similar legislation, which also do not include exceptions for rape or incest. Georgia passed a bill banning abortions after six weeks and includes the exceptions, but requires an official police report alleging the crimes (research shows 3 out of every 4 sexual assaults are not reported, and out of every 1,000 rapes only five perpetrators are convicted). INTERACTIVE MAP: Where is abortion legal? Debate over the exceptions has dominated headlines and ignited Twitter wars.

A U.N. maritime tribunal ruled Saturday that Russia must immediately release three Ukrainian naval vessels captured by Russia in November and also free the 24 sailors it detained. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea issued its order at its Hamburg headquarters following a hearing earlier this month. Russia stayed away from both the hearing and Saturday's session.

Buying a first-generation Land Rover Discovery used to be cheap. The Land Rover Discovery has endured hard times in the used car marketplace. As the Range Rover Classic has quickly become one of the most desirable, sought after and expensive collector cars on the planet, those of more rational or 'peasant status' have turned to the humbled Discovery in search of everyday practicality with up-coming collector car status.

It’s been 73 days since Sarah Huckabee Sanders last held a “daily” White House press briefing. For the most part, she has chosen to bring the Trump administration’s message to Fox News and Fox News only. But on Thursday morning she stepped out of her comfort zone and was quickly reminded what it feels like to be questioned by a real reporter. Sanders’ interview with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on New Day started out all smiles as the two women exchanged pleasantries. But as soon as the host began to dig in on President Trump’s ultimatum to Democrats in Congress that he will not work with them on infrastructure until they stop investigating him, things went south.Alisyn Camerota Loves Doing Journalism at CNN, After Doing the Opposite at Fox News“Congress say they can do two things at once, the Democrats is Congress say this isn't a problem,” Camerota said. “So is the president saying that he cannot do infrastructure while he's being investigated?” “I think it’s a complete lie that Democrats in Congress think they can do two things at once,” Sanders replied. “So far we haven't seen them do anything. Nancy Pelosi has had the majority in the House for months and is yet to accomplish a single thing. They literally haven’t gotten anything done since she took over.” When Camerota pointed out that since January, the House has passed 248 bills and the Senate has passed 161, Sanders laughed it off as insignificant. “I just want to say, it's the president who is saying that he can't do infrastructure while he's being investigated,” Camerota reiterated. “He is the one who walked out of the meeting. So just so that we're clear, he's saying that bridges are not going to be fixed until he's no longer investigated, is that what we hear from the White House?” Instead of answering that question, Sanders stammered a bit as she once again accused Democrats of being “incapable of doing anything other than investigating this president.”“They spend all of their time attacking him and the fact that they would have a meeting an hour before they are set to arrive at the White House where Nancy Pelosi literally accuses the president of a crime and then wants to walk into his office and sit down as if nothing happened, that's just—that's lunacy,” she continued. “That's not even in the realm of possibility. The president absolutely wants to get infrastructure done, he wants to secure our border, he wants to do things that help our veterans, he wants to improve our education system, he wants to do all of those things but Democrats have been unwilling to work with him.”Fox News' Chris Wallace Shuts Down Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Claim About Terrorists Crossing BorderLater, after confirming that Trump’s “merit-based” immigration plan will not prioritize DREAMers, Sanders returned to her attacks on Pelosi for suggesting the president may have committed a crime. “That would be like John telling you that he thought you were stealing from the network and then sitting down in the chair next to you and saying, but no big deal, let's just move forward,” she said, referring to Camerota’s co-host John Berman. “John would never accuse me of something like that,” Camerota said with a smile. “I would hope not,” Sanders added. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

President Trump announced Friday that the U.S. will send about 1,500 more troops to the Middle East to play a “mostly protective” role, amid escalating tensions with Iran. About 1,000 troops will be sent to the region and close to 600 will have their deployments in the Middle East extended, according to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rear Admiral Michael Gilday.

China said the United States needs to correct its "wrong actions" in order for trade talks to continue after it blacklisted Huawei, a blow that has rippled through global supply chains and battered technology shares. Japanese conglomerate Panasonic Corp joined a growing list of global companies that is disengaging from Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world's second-largest seller of smartphones and the largest telecom-gear maker, saying it had stopped shipments of some components. Its move came a day after British chip designer ARM said it had halted relations with Huawei to comply with the U.S. supply blockade, potentially crippling the Chinese firm's ability to make new chips for smartphones.

Climate change has long been a disaster in the making, but until recently the American public tended to treat it as an afterthought. The Green New Deal brought climate change front and center, and made Americans think about big bold solutions instead of technical tweaks and half measures. The think tank Data for Progress has a plan that actually predates Ocasio-Cortez’s, but which goes into much greater detail about how to combat climate change both at home and abroad.

A new indictment against Julian Assange could further delay what was already expected to be a protracted battle to get the WikiLeaks founder out of a London jail cell and into a U.S. court, opening the door for his legal team to argue that the Espionage Act charges are political and thus not covered by an extradition treaty between the two countries. U.S. authorities want to extradite Assange to face charges that he directed the publication of a huge trove of secret documents that disclosed the names of people who provided confidential information to American and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The criteria aren't clearly spelled out, but Assange and his lawyers are likely to use the charges filed Thursday to argue that the Justice Department wants to put him on trial for crimes that are inherently political in that they involve the acquisition and publication of government secrets.

A US federal judge Friday blocked Mississippi's strict abortion law which would have banned the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy. The bill banning abortion where a heartbeat is detectable -- from six weeks -- was passed in March and was due to go into effect on July 1. Mississippi has passed another law banning abortions prior to viability," district judge Carlton Reeves wrote in his order.